Atylotus agrestis is a species of horse fly in the family Tabanidae.^[1]

Originally described as Tabanus agrestis in 1828 by Christian Rudolph Wilhelm Wiedemann from a series of specimens collected in Egypt.^[2] Widespread in Palearctic and Afrotropical realms.^[3][4] Presently widely distributed from Egypt and Cyprus westwards to Libya and Algeria, and eastwards through Saudi Arabia and Iraq^[5] to India, Sri Lanka, and China.^[6] In the last decades Atylotus agrestis continuously extended its distribution northwards: it recently became abundant in northeastern Algeria,^[7] from where it was absent in 1987,^[8] and since the late 1990’s it has been regularly recorded from the Sinai Peninsula, in Israel along the coastal plain and the Rift Valley, and a few years later it appeared in Lebanon and in Saudi Arabia.^[9][10] In Europe the species was first observed in Cyprus in 2015 and in the following years it was confirmed to be a stable element of the local fauna, the first record from Italy, the Pantelleria island, was confirmed in 2017.^[11]

Known hosts in Europe and the Levant are horses, camels and men,^[12][13] in Africa—horses and cattle.^[14][15] In the Arabian Peninsula and Africa this species is an important vector for Trypanosoma parasites causing the disease called surra. Surra is a major disease in camels, equines, cattle and dogs, in which it can often be fatal.^[16][17][18]